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Atticspiral – The Basement Drive-thru Fortress

This is the main stomping grounds for the citizens of the horribly-named Atticspiral. It’s the only drive-thru Dwarf Fortress in all the land. It’s poorly named because it’s a half-mile under the surface, and it is built around a straight-as-an-arrow 2-lane underground dwarven highway. Traders stop at Atticspiral to purchase crappy, cheaply made “impulse buy” turtle shell crafts… with a “made in Atticspiral” sticker on every one! You can see a massive pile of raw turtle shells near the southern end of the screen, lying around because the refuse stockpile is already completely full.

This fortress has a major problem though. The only traders who come through are dwarves (since it’s on a Dwarven highway, after all), and they don’t bring much booze with them. This fact is made worse by the farms of Atticspiral, which are very far away and not very productive.

It takes a dwarf quite a while to get to the surface from down below, so a small stockpile of food and booze is kept near the fields, so that farmers don’t turn back in hunger before they even get there. When finally a plant is produced, and booze produced from it (one requiring the other), it is swallowed down almost before it is added to the stockpile.

Because of this, the dwarves of Atticspiral have taken to walking ALL THE WAY to the TOP of the mountain (I estimate over a kilometer of walking from the base) to get drinks of water. Needless to say, this caused a large decrease in efficiency around here!

So it was problem solving time. I had to get the water all the way down to Atticspiral, without flooding the whole thing. Fortunately, there was a waterfall that fell down a sheer cliff, situated directly above the dining hall. I had my dwarves hollow out a little cave.

I was dismayed to find that the dwarves would not drink right from the waterfall. Maybe they are afraid of getting their poor little mouths hurt? No matter, I sent a dwarf up to the surface to quickly burrow down a chute for water to flow through.

A quick channel was dug, to prevent the whole underground from flooding (the Dwarven race would not be happy with us if we flooded their whole highway). I forbade the dwarves from drinking anywhere else. The dwarves are still grumbling about the complete lack of alcohol, but at least they don’t have to walk far anymore to get a drink… or more turtle shells!